10 Ways to Make Everyone Root for Your Amoral Protagonist. Seven Keys to Writing Good Dialogue | Nathan Bransford - Blog. It goes without saying (but watch me say it) that dialogue is one of the very most crucial elements in a novel. Great dialogue can make a novel sing. Bad dialogue can sink it like a stone. Here are a few ideas on what makes good dialogue work: 1. Good dialogue is not weighed down by exposition When the dialogue is carrying exposition and trying to tell the reader too much, characters end up saying a lot of very unnatural and unwieldy things.
You'll see things like: "Remember that time we stole the frog from Miss Jenkins and she ended up giving us two hours of detention and that's how we met? " So much of this dialogue would already be already apparent to the characters. Exposition and dialogue only really mesh when one character genuinely doesn't know what the other character is telling them and it's natural for them to explain at the moment they're explaining it. 2. A good conversation is an escalation. Characters in a novel never just talk. 3. 4. 5. 6. Poor maligned dialogue tags!!! 7. Spice Up Your Writing With Dialogue. By Judy Cullins Does your chapter sound like a report? Does it go on and on with past tense sentences that tell, rather than show? To spice up your self help, non-fiction or fiction book and even promotional writing, you need to use much more dialogue. Why? Because dialogue presents your story through your characters' hearts and minds.
A story engages your reader rather than bore him with too much telling. If your aim your book at agents and publishers, the first action acquisition editors make is to find a section of dialogue. It is difficult to put just the right words into dialogue--to convey character and emotion. Tips: 1. "You can't be serious, she said in astonishment. " So, show how astonished through dialogue or beat. 2. Stop using -ly verbs such as "I'm afraid it's not going well," he said grimly. " Examples: Percy burst into the zoo keeper's office. "Is something wrong, sir? " "Don't you realize you're killing those poor innocent creatures, you heartless fascist? 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Characters with Character: Random Personality Generator.
If you're enjoying the content here, check out our new site, Thoughtcrime Games. Thanks for visiting! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! I don’t know about you but when I sit down for a one-shot game with a pregen character, I can’t always come up with a unique and interesting personality on the fly. Sometimes the class, race and skill combo strikes a chord, but usually it’s just numbers. To help get me started, I created this quick little Random Personality Generator to come up with the foundations of a character’s persona in three rolls and a minute or so of thought.
This is by no means extensive (though the system can in fact be expanded quite significantly), but is intended to jump start your mind about how to turn a flat, pregenerated statblock into a more living and dynamic character. Using the Generator is a snap. Motivation: What is it that really gets your character’s motor running? If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy: Character Creation Made Easy, Pick a Personality-Method 6-MBTI Profiles | Learn to Write Fiction. Checklist of 17 Character Qualities.